Alumni Feature

To Reach Out to Others, He Reaches Back to His Roots

Philip Lane, a man steeped in the heritage of his people, likes to tell the story about
his great-grandfather, the Sioux medicine man Saswe. "He went on a vision quest, going
without food and water for four days. And he had a vision, a vision that the time was
coming when we had to heal ourselves, to dedicate our lives to others."

The story expresses Lane's task and his inspiration. "I'm old now, and I feel very close
to the beautiful ways of our people," he says. "In the years I have left, I need to be of
service-to help bring about the time that me great-grandfather Saswe foresaw, the time when
we can truly love one another."

I have to serve the people.
Philip Lane seeks his great-grandfather's vision.

Lane, 77, a 1941 forestry graduate of Oregon State, was honored in May with the E.B.
Lemon Distinguished Alumni Award, and in June with the OSU Distinguished Service Award. He
was honored for his devotion to the service of other, especially American Indians.

Lane has worked extensively with Indian prisoners at the Washington State Penitentiary
at Walla Walla, near his home. He is the spiritual leader of the American Indian Science
and Engineering Society (AISES), and he won that organizations; top award in 1987. He has
helped OSU with recruitment and counseling of American Indian students.

Lane was born in 1915 on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in South Dakota. His mother
was a Sioux, his father a white rancher who came north from Texas in a cattle drive in the
1880s. (The Larry McMurtry novel Lonesome Dove tells the story of a cattle drive much like
that one.) He had perhaps a harder childhood than most young Americans who came of age
during the Great Depression: his mother died when he was 6, his father when he was 13. But
he had a remarkable grandfather, Tipi Sapa (Black Lodge), the son of Saswe, and the
youngest chief of the Yankton band of the Sioux.

Tipi Sapa gave up his chieftainship to become the first Indian priest and bishop of the
Episcopal Church. By the English name, Philip J. Deloria, he became widely known and
respected among Indians and whites. A statue of him stands in a place of honor in
Washington, D.C.

The Rev. Deloria's influence gave his young grandson an intensely spiritual upbringing,
training him in the traditional Sioux ceremonies, which imparted discipline and respect for
elders. The Christian faith adopted by his grandfather seemed a natural corollary to the
Sioux ancestral ways, Lane says, for they both proclaim the same God and profess the same
values of love and service. The young men were taught to follow their elders' advice
without question, "with the determination of a youth on his first buffalo hunt," Lane
recalls. "I was taught these things, and I was always being prepared-I was told to always
be ready, never to sleep, because there might be a time when I was needed. It never
occurred to me that there was any other way."

As a teenager Lane was sent to Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas. There, besides
gaining basic vocational education, he developed his talent boxing-a skill that would prove
useful to him later. He also made acquaintances at Haskell who would influence the course
of his life, including a Umatilla Indian from eastern Oregon and a 13-year-old Chickasaw
girl from Oklahoma named Lena Rose Vale, nicknamed Bow.

He finished at Haskell in 1934, at the low point of the Depression, and jobs were hard
to find. But Lane's Umatilla friend knew about a government forestry program in his home
state of Oregon, a federal works project aimed at eradicating the western pine beetle. So in
1934 the two young men traveled west to the Warm Springs Reservation in central Oregon and
went to work in the pine forests there.

Lane was assigned to the survey crew under Charlie Chester, a 1932 forestry graduate from
Oregon Agricultural School, as OSU was then called. Chester liked the look of Phil Lane-his
hardworking attitude his intelligence, and his scrappiness as a boxer. He urged Lane to go
on to college and become a forester.

This was something bigger than Lane had ever dreamed of. His schooling so far had been
pitifully poor preparation for college. Most Indian students were not expected to aspire to
higher education, and they were given few skills to help them is they did. "We got a basic
education, the three Rs," Lane says, "but we were never prepared to go beyond that."

Nevertheless, he applied for and won a scholarship of $400 from the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. In 1936, at age 21, he entered Oregon State.

It took him five years to earn a degree, and it was a tough five years. The course work
was rigorous, but it wasn't only that. Being both an Indian and an older student, Lane also
experienced enormous cultural dislocation. He didn't have much patience, for instance, with
the tradition that freshmen ("rocks") had to wear little green caps. And he never had
enough money. "My shoes were so thin," he jokes," I could step on a dime and tell you if it
was heads or tails."

But he knew how to ask for help. "I was befriended by a lot of people," he says,
including his roommates, Earle and Merle Johnson, who helped him pass a chemistry course.
He also remembers Cal Monroe, Dick Livingston, and an Indian friend, Lionel Kinuan. All
these men were present at the E.B. Lemon award banquet in May.

In 1941, Lane was runner-up for the Pacific Coast Conference boxing championship in the
lightweight division. A few months later he graduated from Oregon State with a degree in
forest management. His program had included some civil engineering courses, and these
proved valuable, for after graduation he joined the Army Corps of Engineers and was
assigned to the Panama Canal.

Then, suddenly, America was in the war, and Lane joined the Navy. He served with the
Seabees and the Naval Air Corps in Florida. While stationed in the Panama Canal he won
the all-service lightweight boxing championship.

In 1943, Lane got a brief leave, traveled to Oklahoma, and married Bow, the woman he'd
been courting, mostly by letter, for almost 12 years. "In the old days," he says, "it
would have been customary to bring horses to her father to ask for her hand. I had no
horses. But now I had an education, and I could provide for her."

After his discharge, Lane returned to Panama with the Corps of Engineers to work on
the Sea Level Locks project. He was transferred to Umatilla in 1949 to help build McNary
Dam and several other Corps of Engineers dams, and then to Walla Walla, where he
continued his structural design work until his retirement in 1971.

Today Lane and his wife raise quarter horses on a ranch near Walla Walla. They have a
son, Phil Jr., of Lethbridge, Alberta, a daughter, Deloria, of Duncan, B.C., and six
grandchildren.

True to his ideals, Lane has actively helped the community wherever he's been. He was
chairman of the Umatilla school board when the family lived there, and he continues with
much civic and church work, particularly projects involving youth.

He got involved in prison outreach through a fellow horseman who happened to be the
warden at the Washington State Penitentiary. "He told me there was quite a contingent of
Indian men serving sentences." Lane went up to the prison and offered his services. He
saw a group of spiritually impoverished men, cut off from their cultural and religious
heritage.

Lane arranged a regular sweat lodge ceremony at the prison, and he prodded skeptical
officials to allow the sacred pipe to be used in religious services. Now, he says, the
Indian ministry at Walla Walla stands as a model for other prisons. "Many of those
released have gone on to lead meaningful lives and have become assets to the
people."

For Lane, the life of service is a happy one. "Even when I was very poor, there was
always something inside me telling me that I have to serve people, regardless of what
the cost. This came down to me from my great-grandfather Saswe. So when it's time for
me to go, I will go happily, because I know I've done the task I was given to do."

Besides the E.B. Lemon Distinguished Alumni Award and the OSU Distinguished Service
Award, Lane has won other awards, including the Baha'i Community United Nations Human
Rights Award, the State of Washington Certificate of Appreciation, and the 1984
Governor's Distinguished Volunteer Award. He has received a Presidential Citation
from Lyndon B. Johnson and an award from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe for outstanding
achievement and service.

Two Forestry Grads Honored at Commencement

This year's OSU Distinguished Service Awards both went to College of Forestry
graduates. Philip N. Lane and Faye H. Stewart received their awards at
the University's 123rd Commencement in June. (Please see the longer articles on Lane
and
Stewart
in this issue).

Lane, a 1941 graduate in forest management, is a Yankton Sioux who has devoted
much time to service in both Indian and non-Indian causes. He is the spiritual leader
of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and has worked with
Indian prisoners at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, helping them
rediscover their heritage. He and his wife live in Walla Walla, Wash.

Stewart, a 1938 graduate in forest engineering, helped establish the wood-products
company Bohemia, Inc. Stewart also pioneered the use of balloon logging as head of
the company The Flying Scotsman, Inc. He and his wife, Lucille, are among the
University's most ardent supporters. They live in Eugene.